‘Andor’ Gave Us A Villain Romance for the Ages

Andor’s second season has been a wild ride. Mike’s recaps have covered the high highs and the low lows. Every viewer likely has their own preferences; some are here for Mon Mothma’s strength under fire, some for Cassian’s rebel agent exploits, and others for the tense lead-up to the events of Rogue One. Whether the season is as much a triumph as the first or is a much more flawed creation is a matter of taste, but something we surely can all agree upon is that Dedra Meero and Syril Karn were meant for each other.

Yes, they’re rotten fascist ghouls who seem to get an almost fetishistic charge out of serving the Empire. Dedra (Denise Gough) is a dead-eyed Imperial Security Bureau operator trying to crush any hint of dissent that could impede her imperial overlords. Syril (Kyle Soller) is a bootlicking creep who is only too happy to infiltrate rebel cells when he’s not being an office drone. They’re both awful, but fascinatingly intense people whose love seems genuine, even if they are repugnant. In the first season, Syril was a stalker-ish admirer of Dedra; he seemed as attracted to her position of imperial power as to the woman herself. Dedra seemed, if not attracted to Syril, then at least glad about being desired. He was the eager crony to her imperious mistress. When season two began, Andor showed how the dynamic had deepened. Dedra and Syril live together and enjoy a quiet, if chilly, domesticity. There are implications of a sexual life between them, but the stiff, brief pecks they share make for meager evidence. Their relationship seems like a grand joke: two gaunt, tightly-wound weirdos sharing a parody of romance. That in itself is compelling in an askance way, but there seemed to be genuine care between them. When Syril’s croaking, overbearing mother Eedy (the great Kathryn Hunter) visits the couple in their apartment, Dedra actually does something nice for Syril. She lays down ground rules with Eedy, offering regular contact and visits from Syril in exchange for Eedy dialing back her parental terrorism. This may be as close to a purely good deed as Dedra is likely to do. Yes, it’s mired in toxicity, but it’s a sign of an actual connection.

On Syril’s end, he serves his lady by doing some dirty work on Ghorman for her. Unfortunately, this is also where the seeds of their relationship’s destruction are planted. Syril believes he’s being sent to keep tabs on so-called “outside agitators” who threaten imperial plans and really throws himself into the triple-agent role. It’s all for his lady Dedra, and by extension, the Empire, but it’s a false mission. Dedra and the ISB want to strip-mine the planet and are hoping Syril can lure the rebels into direct action, which would give the Empire a pretense for clamping down. When the violence comes, Dedra’s ISB lies are laid bare. Syril is genuinely hurt when he confronts Dedra, and she tries in vain to repair their relationship. They’re space-Nazis that wouldn’t deserve a drop of water if they were on fire, but that makes the presence of a genuine emotional connection all the more compelling. Syril wouldn’t be hurt, and Dedra wouldn’t be remotely contrite if there was nothing there between them. It’s a gnarled, comedically twisted thing, but it’s there nonetheless.

Dedra and Syril join the ranks of great TV supervillain couples like Mariah and Shades of Luke Cage and George and Bertha Russell of The Gilded Age. They’re horrible people who make their fictional worlds worse places to live, but the love and passion between them is a lot of fun to watch. It may be tempting to draw a line from loving two fictional monsters together to having some kind of sympathy for real-world monsters, but their love is not redemptive. It doesn’t make them better people, but it does make them much better characters. Fiction is ultimately fantasy, after all. I’d absolutely loathe them in real life, but on Andor, Dedra and Syril were a villain romance for the ages.